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How I spend less time on YouTube

pawelurbanek.com

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Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#141

Post by xondono »

scrollaway wrote: post #44
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #20

The best way I’ve found to spend less time on YouTube is realizing that the vast majority of content is pure garbage and just stay the hell away from it. These days I only visit it when I need something specific (a tutorial on how to do a particular thing, a video the kid wants to watch, etc). And of course uBlock origin is enabled to spare me from the “unskippable ads that are longer than the video itself” experienc…

YouTube has some of the best, highest quality free content available on the internet today. Stay away from the crap, remove it from your recommendations, subscribe to some good channels. It’s that simple. Don’t if that’s not your thing but you’re missing out. If you change your mind here are a few exceptional channels to get you started, they should cater well to a HN style audience: Technology Connections (misc tech…

Sabine Hossenfelder (physics and science) is now publishing quite regularly on youtube.

Patrick Boyle (markets) is criminally undersubscribed IMO.

Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#142

Post by avgDev »

aeternum wrote: post #133
dncornholio wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always text over video. When people say they prefer video, they don't know better, haven't actually been learning anything or are extremely lazy. For example, to do a gradient in Gimp, you should know a few shortcode keys. Now how do I look up which key to use again? Load the video and keep fiddling with the player until I hit the right moment where he explains this little detail? It's extremely annoying to look up a…

For things like fixing a car part or home repair video is much better than text. There's nothing like watching someone do it, quickly seeing the exact location of things and how they should be moved.

This isn't true. Once you know cars enough, the same thing applies to car repair.

I just need the torque specs for the bolts, I don't need or want to watch a whole video.

Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#143

Post by godshatter »

I reduce my time on YouTube by going there with a specific subject in mind, search on it, and use yt-dlp to download the likely candidates and watch them offline. It has the added bonus of being able to re-watch them offline without going back to YT.

It's similar, now that I think about it, to my shopping routine. Research what I want, go in, grab it, and get the heck out.

I've learned over the years that if I don't want to buy too much or spend a few hours watching videos I could do without, I limit my interactions voluntarily.

Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#145

Post by delecti »

zczc wrote: post #72

What helped me was moving channels from YouTube subscriptions to RSS feeds. Thus I stopped opening YouTube homepage and play videos straight from RSS client. RSS URLs are " rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=

There's also the youtube subscription page. https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions

If you only use youtube to watch videos posted by your subscribed channels, then go to the page that youtube fills exclusively with all of the videos posted by your subscribed channels. It's wild to me how many people use the homepage to consume their subscriptions.

Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#146

Post by yelling_cat »

scoutt wrote: post #31

> Am I the only one who launches YouTube just to watch a single tutorial and ends up devouring dozens of fine-tuned recommendations? I'm hitting 40 next week, and seeing others asking for recommendations of videos on "programming a microcontroller" (or programming related) is something I can't understand. One day I sat and watched some of the videos they were recommending, and in most of them there were a person talk…

> Also, the video, at least to me, makes the person doing the tutorial to be seen as "more authoritative" than through text, even if you can tell the person talking has little experience with microcontrollers (or whatever, if you have experience in the field).

And with the dislike count gone we've lost the only way to tell at a glance if a tutorial is worth spending time on. Good luck finding a thoughtful critique in the comments.

Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#147

Post by [deleted] »

titzer wrote: post #71
scoutt wrote: post #31

> Am I the only one who launches YouTube just to watch a single tutorial and ends up devouring dozens of fine-tuned recommendations? I'm hitting 40 next week, and seeing others asking for recommendations of videos on "programming a microcontroller" (or programming related) is something I can't understand. One day I sat and watched some of the videos they were recommending, and in most of them there were a person talk…

This is true for certain kinds of tasks, particularly programming or anything very instruction-oriented. However, for practical tasks, like installing a bathroom faucet, a short and succint video is gold. Now that YouTube has chapter labels, it's even better. That said, YouTube is clearly going downhill for a host of other reasons, but hands-on tutorials remain one of its best forms of content.

[deleted]

Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#148

Post by avhon1 »

celsoazevedo wrote: post #110
redthrow wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that uBlock Origin (or Brave) isn't enough for YouTube. If you use Piped [0] you can only watch the updates from channels you are subscribed to without ads, intro, sponsors/promo etc. [0] https://piped.kavin.rocks

That site is using Sponsor Block: https://sponsor.ajay.app/

...which, for those not familiar, is available as a browser extension. It crowdsources timestamps for non-necessary parts of youtube videos, and can automatically fetch those timestamps and skip over them in videos you're watching.

Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#149

Post by [deleted] »

outside1234 wrote: post #140
dncornholio wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always text over video. When people say they prefer video, they don't know better, haven't actually been learning anything or are extremely lazy. For example, to do a gradient in Gimp, you should know a few shortcode keys. Now how do I look up which key to use again? Load the video and keep fiddling with the player until I hit the right moment where he explains this little detail? It's extremely annoying to look up a…

I think it is an "AND" vs. "OR" thing. Your examples are great for those use cases, but there are others where having the long form is really good. For example, Jon Gjengset's Rust series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O0Nt9qY_vo

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